note
Ratazong
<p>You should ask yourself why you want to learn a new language. And what you will use it for.
<ul><li>Do you want it for work? Or just for fun?</li>
<li>Do you want to learn new concepts? Or do you want to learn the basics of programming?</li>
<li>Do you have some application in mind? GUI-programming, mathematical, financial, database ...?</li>
</ul></p>
<p>
If you don't know it yet, C is probably a good choice:
It is widespread, the syntax is similar to Perl and there is even an interface between Perl and C.
</p><p>
Another popular choice is Java: It is a very widespread language, with a huge API for
many things, including networking and GUI. And you'll forced to learn the OO-concepts there ...
</p><p>
If OO is relevant for you, you might also want to have a look at C++.
</p><p>
On the other hand you may just want to broaden your knowledge of "skripting" and learn new flavours.
Then think of Ruby, Python and PHP.
</p><p>
Or do you want to pick some exotics? Just to think differently? Try Forth or even better Lisp. Or -in the other direction-
assembler.
</p><p>
If you want it for business, check the domain you will work in. For financial, ABAP is probably helpful,
for more mathematical oriented busines MATLAB is probably worth a try.
Or learn the classical ones: COBOL respectively Fortran.
</p>
And if databases are your focus, why don't you try SQL, which also fits nicely to Perl...
<p>
In the architecture they say "form follows function". It is similar with programming-languages.
Decide what you want to do, and the number of possible languages narrows to very few. Or -in many work
environments- the language is predefined anyways.
</p><p>
HTH, Rata</p>(who has used over 10 programming-languages till now (plus some experiments in others), and thinks that the basic concepts are the important things, not the languages themselves)
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